I tried Knoppix 4.0 and had a couple of problems. On the first PC it would not recognize the MS laser mouse, so it was difficult to test. After a couple of months I thought I might try it again. I have another PC that I ran Knoppix 3.8 on for over a year (installed to the HD). Recently I have tried several distros on this machine and all of the Debian derivatives put up a message about checking the USB and then hang for ever (I have to reset the computer). I have a HP PSC1315 printer attached to one of the USB ports and the Debian net-install would not hang if I unplugged it (Debian did not configure X correctly so I copied my config files from the Knoppix 3.8 /etc to get X to work, and Debian eventually had my printer screwed-up (I had a localHP and then gained a localHP@64 and another that was similar)). Knoppix 4.0 had the same problem with the USB hang-up. I have installed Debian twice (previous and latest releases), Knoppix 3.8, Ubuntu 5.10, and Kubuntu 5.10 (and I think the previous version) and none have ever found my SB-AWE64 sound card. Suse 10.0 did OK but it failed to configure my network (I probably mis-understood a question and responded incorrectly - but there was not an obvious path to change the configuration). Suse showed my network card and its IP address but there was no “path� to use the network (browser would not find the net). Fedora 4 installed the best. I had my HP PSC 1315 printer working and configured Samba so my wife's Win 2000 PC could access it. BUT it is slowwww and I did an update to Kernel 2.6.15 which will now not boot (kernel panic whatever that means) and if I boot to the previous kernel, 2.6.11, it will run for 10-24 hours and then just lock up with no error messages or log entries (something has changed as after I first installed Fedora it would run until I forced a restart). I don't think my hardware is bad (causing the lock-up) as Knoppix 3.8 has been running from CD for the last 36 hours.

One big plus for Linux is xsane. My HP scan software running on Win2K is slow and awkward. With the printer on a Linux box, xsane does fast high quality scans.

If anybody knows of a fix for the Knoppix 4.0 problem (USB hang-up), please advise (I refuse to disconnect the printer as that is pure bogus). I might re-install Knoppix 3.8 or Windows 2000 (all of the Linux distros need more testing, but it is difficult to get involved - I know that hardware varies but my machines are pretty basic and it can't be that difficult to design software that can determine how to configure the systems - yes I have experience writing assembler drivers for embedded systems and interrupt handlers for MS Windows).

One more thing, I used Unix in the late 80's until the company I was with switched to Windows 3.11 because it took so long to configure the Unix systems and Windows could be running in less than 2 hours with few hardware related issues. Linux is a Unix variant and I do not see how it can be commercially successful in the desktop market (and in the end somebody needs to support themselves from it) when it is as flakey as it is. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
WOR